Radio Muezzin is a documentary-on-stage featuring four of the many clarion-voiced men who sing the Muslim call to prayer in Cairo’s mosques. The play had only one private performance in its subjects’ hometown – the topic is sensitive there just now – but the men and their work have found a warm welcome in Berlin, a city with its own issues around Islam.
Author: Matthew Westphal
Auction Of Versace’s Belongings Pulls In £7 Million
“The contents of fashion designer Gianni Versace’s opulent villa on the shores of Italy’s Lake Como sold [in London] Wednesday for more than seven million pounds, Sotheby’s auction house said.” Among the top-selling items were a pair of cherry-wood bookcases and two large plaster statues of naked Greek boxers.
– But One Painting, Allegedly Stolen, Was Pulled
“Sotheby’s, which auctioned the contents of Versace’s villa in London yesterday, withdrew an 18th-century portrait by the German artist Johann Zoffany after its subject’s family claimed that it had been stolen from their home in London 30 years ago.”
In Paris, A ‘David Vs. Goliath’ Struggle Over Opera Singers
The incoming director of the Paris Opéra, Nicolas Joël, is adding a clause to singers’ contracts forbidding appearances at other houses in the city. The head of the Opéra-Comique is crying foul, claiming that state-funded theaters shouldn’t undermine each other in such a way. “In the case that concerns us, an artist who sings three phrases at the Paris Opéra can’t sing elsewhere (in the capital). As if that could affect attendance at the Opéra.”
Dancing With Disability
“Not everyone is ready for this dance company that calls itself Gimp and its members with undeveloped or amputated limbs, and bodies beset with physical challenges.”
Met’s Birthday Bash Brings In $6.3 Million
“Star power and visual razzle dazzle made for an entertaining evening at the Metropolitan Opera last night as the company celebrated its 125th anniversary with a sold out gala that raised $6.3 million.
Actor And Activist Ron Silver, 62
A star of film (Reversal of Fortune, Enemies: A Love Story), stage (Speed-the-Plow, Hurlyburly) and television (The West Wing, Chicago Hope), Silver was also known for being the raging liberal firebrand who endorsed George W. Bush at the 2004 Republican convention.
NYS Legislation Would Outlaw Deaccessioning For Operating Cash
“The bill, drafted [and introduced] by Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky in collaboration with the New York State Board of Regents and the Museum Association of New York, would prohibit museums from using proceeds from the sale of artworks ‘for traditional and customary operating expenses.'”
Nineteen Ways Of Looking At Michelle Obama
“She’s a private person in a public role, a black woman in a costume drama played previously only by whites, an outspoken professional with a traditional sense of hearth and home. We all feel like we know her, but we don’t really.” A series of essays on the new First Lady and the many things she seems to signify.
Time‘s ’10 Ideas Changing The World Right Now’
The very model of a modern major mainstream newsweekly has got a little list, with items like making the interstate highway system into “a highway/light-rail/power-grid nexus,” a new kind of retail outlet called a “survival store,” Africa as business hub, recycling “underperforming asphalt” in suburbia, and the return of Calvinism.